Optimism as an indicator of psychological health: Using psychological assessment wisely

Healthy aspects of psychological functioning are often overlooked in tradit ional psychological assessment. When this happens, the client may become di scouraged with his or her testing results, or perhaps worse, may feel that the assessor was not interested in obtaining a complete picture of who he o r she is. Assessing healthy aspects of psychological functioning can be pro blematic, however; adding new instruments that only speak to one aspect of psychological functioning is not practical. A system is proposed in which o ne aspect of healthy psychological functioning-optimism-can be assessed usi ng a standard projective test. Use of this scale can aid the assessor in co nceptualizing the client's functioning and can also be a helpful tool to dr aw on in the course of treatment.